Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreements

Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements are legal contracts between two or more parties that details information, data or other material that the parties within the agreement want to share with each other for a number of reasons but that they do not want to go beyond the parties involved.

This sort of agreement restricts the access of anyone else to the information and ensures that the parties involved do not share the information within anyone beyond the parties involved in the agreement. There are several different types of confidentiality agreements and non-disclosure agreements with different uses.

What is a confidentiality agreement?

A confidentiality agreement is also known as a non-disclosure agreement, a confidential disclosure agreement, a proprietary information agreement or secrecy agreement. The agreement is legal in nature and creates a confidential relationship between the parties. This is usually used for business purposes and often protects trade secrets and other confidential business information. Often, when two individuals, businesses or organisations are thinking about doing business together or merging their businesses, they will sign a confidentiality agreement contract and then share their business information between them so that they can each get a feel for the other business and decide whether they want to go ahead and work together.

However, this information must be protected because there are usually very important business secrets that are shared. If either of the individuals or businesses decide that they do not want to work together, the other business or individual’s information will be protected and they can rest assured that their secrets will stay secret.

Employee confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements

Another way in which confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements are used is when an employee joins a new company. Often, the confidentiality contract is to protect company information that employees might have to have access to in order to do their jobs. Many companies have a clause written into the employee’s contract stating that certain information, data and material must be kept strictly confidential. Sometimes, employers will write a clause into the employee’s contract stating that the employee cannot work for a rival business immediately after stopping work for the current business.

Different types of non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement

There are several different types of non-disclosure agreements that serve different purposes. Some of these confidentiality contracts include:

Unilateral or one way agreements

This sort of non-disclosure agreement is usually where one individual shares the information with another and does not receive any information in return. The information the one person shares could be kept a secret for a number of different reasons. One of the most common reasons is the secrecy conditions attached to patent laws when launching a new product or device. It could also be to protect the individual sharing the information from the individual receiving the information using the information without compensating the individual who shared it with them.

Mutual non-disclosure agreements

This sort of confidentiality agreement is where both parties share information with each other that must be kept mutually secret. This is the type of non-disclosure agreement entered into by individuals or businesses who are considering merging together or doing business together.

Who handles non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements for clients?

Sometimes individuals or businesses handle their own agreements and some businesses simply write the information rules into employee contracts. However, it is often necessary, for the parties sharing information to protect themselves properly, that the confidentiality contract is mediated by a professional organisation who handle this sort of think regularly. This way, you know that all the loopholes and possible areas where something can go wrong are covered.

Some of the organisations that handle this sort of thing include Law Live, Michalsons, Open Access, Bowman, Werksmans, Webber Wentzel and many more. Make sure you use a reputable, well-known company that has a good track record with this sort of thing. It is also necessary to choose a firm that specialises in non-disclosure and other similar agreements.